Modu Chanyu

Modu Chanyu (234 BC-174 BC) was Chanyu of the Great Hunnic Empire of Xiongnu from 209 BC to 174 BC, succeeding Touman and preceding Laoshang Chanyu.

Biography
Modu Chanyu was born in 234 BC, the son of the Xiongnu chanyu Touman. He was sent as a hostage to the Yuezhi barbarians shortly before his father waged war on them, hoping to have his son killed so that he could install his favorite son as king. However, Modu bravely escaped, and his father gave him command of an army. In 209 BC, Modu killed his father with a bow during a hunt, and he had his stepmother and other famile members killed in order to ensure that his rule would go unchallenged.

Reign as Chanyu
Now holding the title of Chanyu, Modu unified the tribes of the Mongolian steppes, splitting the Donghu into the Xianbei and Wuhuan tribes and also defeating the Dingling and Yuezhi by 203 BC. All Xiongnu lords submitted to him after his conquest of the other tribes, enabling Modu to invade China. In 200 BC, he led 40,000 troops in an invasion of the Han dynasty, facing Emperor Liu Bang's 320,000 Han troops at the battle of Baideng. Liu Bang was surrounded in the city of Baideng and eventually forced to surrender, and Modu Chanyu took one of Liu Bang's daughters as a wife and agreed that the Great Wall would be the new border with China. After the campaign, Modu subjugated the Yuezhi and Wusun, having secured a seventy-year peace treaty with the Chinese. He is currently identified as "Oghuz Khagan" by the Turks, who revere Oghuz as the father of the Turkic peoples; the Turkish Army claims that Modu was their founder in 209 BC, having created the Xiongnu military. At the time of Modu's death in 174 BC, his empire stretched from Korea and the Yellow Sea in the east to eastern Kazakhstan and Tajikistan in Central Asia.